Linux Command Reference Index

A alias Create your own name for a command arch print machine architecture ash ash command interpreter (shell) awk (gawk) pattern scanning and processing language

B basename Remove directory and suffix from a file name bash GNU Bourne-Again Shell bsh Command interpreter (Shell) bc Command line calculator bunzip2 Unzip .bz2 files

C cat Concatenate a file print it to the screen chgrp Change the group designation of a file chmod Change file permissions chown Change the owner of a file cjpeg Compress an image file to a JPEG file clear Clear terminal screen (command line) comm Compare two sorted files stty cooked Formatting the display of text in a terminal cp Copy command cpio Copy files to and from archives csh C Shell cut Print selected parts of lines to standard output

D date Display date and time dc Command line calculator df Show amount of disk space free diff Determine difference between two files diff3 Determine difference between 3 files dig Interrogate DNS name servers djpeg Decompress a JPEG file to an image file dmesg Print or control the kernel ring buffer (print out bootup messages) dnsdomainname Show the system's DNS domain name doexec Run an executable with an arbitrary argv domainname Show or set the system's NIS/YP domain name dos2unix Converts plain text files in DOS/MAC format to UNIX format du Show disk useage dumpkeys Write keyboard driver's translation tables to std output

E echo Display a line of text ed Line-oriented text editor egrep Print lines matching a pattern elinks A text mode WWW browser (supports frames) env Dislay the path ex Start Vim in ex mode eject Eject media from device ( command line )

F factor Display prime factors of a number false Exit with a status code indicating failure fdisk The fdisk command with usage examples fgrep Variant of grep find Find a file finger Displays information about the system users fixps Try to fix common PostScript problems that break postprocessing free Display free memory

G grep Search for a pattern using regular expression gtar See the tar command gunzip Unzip .gz files gzip Compress using Lempel-Ziv coding (LZ77)

H halt Stop the system hdparm Get/set harddisk parameters head Print the first 10 lines of a file to standard output hostname Show or set the system's host name history Display entire command history HISTSIZE Change history size httpd Start Apache

I identify Describes the format and characteristics of image files. id Print information for username, or the current user ifconfig Display network and hardware addresses igawk Gawk with include files ipcalc Calculate IP information for a host

K kbd_mode Report or set the keyboard mode (RAW, MEDI- UMRAW or XLATE)

kill Terminate a process

L last Show listing of last logged in users lastlog Formats and prints the contents of the last login log /var/log/lastlog file link Call the link function to create a link to a file links See elinks ln Create a link to the specified TARGET with optional LINK_NAME loadkeys Load keyboard translation tables locate Locate a file login Sign on look Displays any lines in file which contain "string" as a prefix. ls List directory contents lsmod List loaded kernel modules lynx Command to start the Lynx browser

M mac2unix Converts plain text files in DOS/MAC format to UNIX format mail A mail processing system, which has a command syntax like ed man Display a particular manual entry manweb Manweb is part of the Netpbm package mdu Display the amount of space occupied by an MSDOS directory mkdir Create a directory mkfs Make a filesystem on a drive mknod Make block or character special files mktemp Make temporary filename (unique) more Page through text one screenful at a time. mount Mount a filesystem/device mt Control magnetic tape drive operation mv Move and / or rename files N namei Follow a pathname until a terminal point is found nano An enhanced free Pico clone ncftp Browser program for the File Transfer Protocol nc nc is the client interface to the NEdit text editor netstat Display verbose info about network processes and ports nice Run a command with modified priority nisdomainname Show or set system's NIS/YP domain name nslookup query internet domain name servers

P paste Merge lines of files pdf2dsc Generate a PostScript page list of a PDF document

pdf2ps Convert PDF file "input.pdf" to PostScript(tm) in "output.ps" pdfinfo Print contents of the 'Info' dictionary (plus some other useful information) from a PDF file pdftotext Convert pdf files to plain text perl (start) Practical Extraction and Report Language pgawk The profiling version of gawk pico Text editor that comes with Pine (from the University of Washington) pine Email program used by The University of Washington ping6 Ping ping Send ICMP ECHO_REQUEST to network hosts pinky A lightweight 'finger' program; pr Format for printing ps Processes running ps2ascii Ghostscript translator from PostScript or PDF to ASCII ps2epsi Generate conforming Encapsulated PostScript ps2frag Obsolete shell script for the PSfrag system ps2pdf12 Convert PostScript to PDF 1.2 (Acrobat 3 and later compatible) using ghostscript ps2pdf13 Convert PostScript to PDF 1.3 (Acrobat 4 and later compatible) using ghostscript ps2pdf14 Use ps2pdfwr: Convert PostScript to PDF without specifying Compatibility Level, using ghostscript ps2pdf Convert PostScript to PDF using ghostscript ps2pdfwr Convert PostScript to PDF without specifying Compatibility Level, using ghostscript ps2pk creates a TeX pkfont from a type1 PostScript font ps2ps ps2ps uses gs to convert PostScript(tm) file "input.ps" to simpler and (usually) faster PostScript in "output.ps" psbook Rearranges pages from a PostScript document into "signatures" for printing books or booklets pwd Print Working Directory

Q quota display disk usage and limits

R resize Xterm window size readelf Displays information about ELF files reboot Stop the system, poweroff, reboot red red is a restricted ed: it can only edit files in the current directory and cannot execute shell commands rename Rename files rmdir Remove a directory rm Remove files or directories rpm rpm command options rundig Sample script to create a search database for ht://Dig rview The GUI version of Vim in easy mode with restrictions rvi Vi / Vim editor

S sed Stream editor setfont Load EGA/VGA console screen font set gid Set group id

set serial Get / set Linux serial port info set uid Set user id sfdisk Modified fdisk program sftp Secure file transfer protocol (ftp) sh Shell (BASH) shred Safely remove data from disk drive sleep Delay for a specified amount of time slocate Security Enhanced version of the GNU Locate sort Sort lines of a text file ssh Secure shell connection command stty change and print terminal line settings stty raw Unformatted output to terminal su Become super user ( root ) switchdesk Graphical and text mode interface for choosing desktop environment sync Force changed blocks to disk, update the super block ssh Secure shell connection command

T tail Print the last 10 Lines of a file standard output tar Create an Archive tcsh Enhanced completely compatible version of the Berkeley UNIX C shell, csh tee Copy standard input to each file, and also to standard output telnet User interface to the telnet protocol time Run the specified program command with the given arguments touch Change file timestamps tracepath6 See tracepath tracepath Trace path to a network host discovering MTU along this path traceroute6 See traceroute traceroute Print the route packets take to network host tree Display file tree true Exit with a status code indicating success tty Print name of terminal connected to standard output

U umask File creation mask / Bash builtins umount Detache file system(s) mentioned from file hierarchy uname Print system information ( kernel version ) unicode_start Put keyboard and console into Unicode (UTF-8) mode unicode_stop Undo the effect of unicode_start unlink Call the unlink function to remove the specified file uniq Remove duplicate lines from sorted file updatedb Update the slocate database unset gid Group id change unset uid User id change untar Unarchive ( untar ) a file unzip Unzip .zip files useradd Add new user users Output who is currently logged in according to system records

usleep Sleep a given number of microseconds. default is 1 V view Start vim in read-only mode vi Start the vi editor

W w Show who is logged on and what they are doing wc Word count of a file wget Non-interactive download of files from the Web whatis Search the whatis database for complete words (command names) whereis Locate a command or file which Find command path whoami Print effective userid who show who is logged on whois Client for the whois service

X,Y,Z xinit Start Xserver xpdf Portable Document Format (PDF) file viewer for X windows xrandr Change resolution running Xwindows ( command line ) ypdomainname show or set the system's NIS/YP domain name zcat Compress or expand files zip Compression and file packaging utility for Unix, VMS, MSDOS, OS/2, Windows NT, Minix, Atari and Macintosh, Amiga and Acorn RISC OS. It is analogous to a combination of the UNIX commands tar(1) and compress(1) and is compatible with PKZIP (Phil Katzs ZIP for MSDOS systems) zipinfo List detailed information about a ZIP archive